COMPLIT 173: Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 273, SLAVIC 156, SLAVIC 356)

Course Description

How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.